How to make our ideas clear
In the article, “How to make our ideas clear” by Charles S. Peirce. Charles explains more deeply about the methods of common logic methods which are Clearness, Obscure distinct and confused conceptions. Both clear and obscure conceptions are the opposite of each other, while distinctness and confusions conceptions are the opposite of each other as well. Charles believes that logicians are unclear of their explanations for Clearness. According to the article he states, “This is rather a neat bit of philosophical terminology; yet, since it is clearness that they were defining, I wish the logicians had made their definition a little more plain”. Charles had obviously doubted the logicians’ way of seeing clarity knowing that they have yet to learn new material for this method. Also, he discusses the philosopher Descartes and how he began his method of philosophy. Descartes first started off with allowing term doubtless and cutting of the usual belief of the authority having complete power. After this he
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began his next step with analyzing the human mind and claiming that it is a more natural way for humans. Descartes talks about clear and distinct ideas, the clear ones are the ones that can't be mistaken for something else, for example; when we feel pain and we know the exact location where we feel it, and our thoughts count as clear ideas too because if we wish to have something so much, we already have a comprehensible believe. The distinct ideas are the ones that can't be confused. An idea has to always be clear in order to be recognizable. In some cases people become familiarized with an idea and forget about the meaning of it. We have to know the purpose of the idea and try to investigate deeper so we can master our thinking and the idea. The distinct idea has different meaning because it's not only an idea but it's something created with a lot of thinking and logic. An example of this would be when we believe in god, we have to think about the idea in order to do that we've think a lot about it to become real. It’s so evident that they stay in our minds and can't be doubt. An idea has to be clear and the most important distinct. Our mind can get information but never originate it, unless we have the truth and enough evidence first than other people. An order is an essential element of intellectual economy. People can easily learn this method if they have limited or restricted ideas, they can master their own ideas and the meaning of them. A clear idea is much better than a confused one because the clear can help us a lot to understand the meaning of what the person is trying to say. A person is hardly persuaded to enunciate to his thoughts and much less when his head is confused. A terrible idea can make so much changes in a man's head, it can even affect his health and the way he thinks. Logic should show us how to make our ideas clear and wisdom too. When we doubt is when we think about it so many times and we don't believe in it. If we don't believe in something we can't make it possible or can’t become real. There is always some mental activity in our daily decisions and when it's about making choices but we always have doubts too. We ask ourselves how we should act when we are present in this situation. After so many years have passed we require that master for our own ideas and beliefs, we feel more comfortable with such situations we confronted in the past. Now, we know how to act in front of them. There are many types of consciousness, the ones for example, in the radio when we play it for one hour or even for a week can be produced on our minds but with the air is different because we actually have to presence it, the air occupies certain moment. In order to perceive the air, there must be continuous consciousness. For example, we can perceive the letters of a book immediately and the theme or perceive what the book is going to be about. There are elements as the sensations which are present by the very moment until they last, while the others as the thought are actions that only have beginning, middle and end, they consist of series of awareness that run through the brain. They can't be immediately available to us, but they involve our past or future. According to Charles Pierce "Thought is only one such system, for its sole motive, idea, and function is to produce belief, and whatever does not concern that purpose belongs to some other systems of relations". This quote means that in order for us to believe, we have to process information and the power of the illustrations and the proof can make us believe even more. Thought can serve us for other purposes, for example for perverted people it can serve for purposes of pleasure as the author Peirce said. "Whatever does not refer to belief is no part of the thought itself" meaning that no thought can possible have no belief because once is in our minds, it means we believe in it but is up to us to don't and discard it. A belief is something we are conscious of, it satisfies the displeasure of doubt or disbelieve and it's the foundation of our habit. When we doubt, we tried to look for some evidence or proof in order to believe something. Once we find it, belief is reached and our thought relaxes. Thought at rest meaning that there is always doubt and sometimes we fix it looking for evidence then other thoughts that we haven't find something to believe on that. The habit make us act and think about something, no matter in what situation we are. The habit is something we are used to and as a simple way of thinking that we use every day. Everyone has their own believes and as catholic and Christian people do, for example Christian people don't believe in the virgin Mary but catholic people do. We should consider the effects, we think that object to have it then our thinking about those effects is the whole of our notion of the destination. In conclusion the author Charles S.
Pierce lastly discusses the differences between real and fiction how they both are treated differently in the minds of human beings. Reality is basically independent in the outside while on the other hand; fiction is dependent from our minds to make it what we think. For example, if one were to dream about falling in the sky, their brains will react to that dream and result in the body to wake up after they believe to land face flat on the ground in their dream. In the world of fiction, the person is the creator or modifier of their thoughts on what they live through or dream of. Our minds are dependent on our thoughts which give us the thinking that something is real or not. While reality on the contrary is pretty much unchangeable of anything, it contains facts and truth. No modifications from the mind can alter reality. Everything goes by fate and destiny which is something no one can escape
from.
Although reality involves a vast supply of details and you can not select them all. Many writers, directors, and artists, emphasis with this information and diminish other information in order to make the novels, movies, plays and etc. more vivid to our imagination.
The short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, exemplifies the idea of dream versus reality. A dream is believe that comes from the deepest stage of your mind. Is based on ideas, emotions and sensations that sometimes are related to our real life or just a fantasy. Reality is a succession of events that exist.
Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.
Virginia Woolf demonstrates this idea in her short story “The Mark on the Wall” Before the unnamed narrator comes to the realization that the mark on the wall is a snail, (and it’s important to note this realization comes by happenstance rather investigation), the narrator rolls out a series of random thoughts seemingly to help him forget the reality around him. He at one points starts with the seemingly random thought, “Wood is a pleasant thing to think about. It comes from a tree; and trees grow, and we don’t know how they grow…” (53). The statement that “Wood is a pleasant thing to think about” suggests a deliberate transition from his previous unpleasant organized thoughts to random inconsequential ones. In the previous thought, the narrator made the observation that in life a person desires something to real to grasp onto. “Thus, walking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light and lies quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is a proof of some existence other than ours. That is what one wants to be sure of…” (53). James Harker on this point made the observation that “For Woolf, the modern literary experience derives from the nature of the faculties of perception, the tenuous points of connection - and disjunction -
In his work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes narrates the search for certainty in order to recreate all knowledge. He begins with “radical doubt.” He asks a simple question “Is there any one thing of which we can be absolutely certain?” that provides the main question of his analysis. Proceeding forward, he states that the ground of his foundation is the self – evident knowledge of the “thinking thing,” which he himself is. Moving up the tower of certainty, he focuses on those ideas that can be supported by his original foundation. In such a way, Descartes’s goal is to establish all of human knowledge of firm foundations. Thus, Descartes gains this knowledge from the natural light by using it to reference his main claims, specifically
Douglas Light said that our imagination is better than any answer to a question. Light distinguishes between two genres: fantasy and fiction. He described how fantasy stimulates one’s imagination, which is more appealing, but fiction can just be a relatable story. In the same way, books and movies are very different entities. In the short parable Doubt, the readers are lured in to the possibility of a scandalous relationship between a pastor and an alter boy.
When we read any work of fiction, no matter how realistic or fabulous, as readers, we undergo a "suspension of disbelief". The fictional world creates a new set of boundaries, making possible or credible events and reactions that might not commonly occur in the "real world", but which have a logic or a plausibility to them in that fictional world. In order for this to be convincing, we trust the narrator. We take on his perspective, if not totally, then substantially. He becomes our eyes and ears in this world and we have to see him as reliable if we are to proceed with the story's development.
Descartes’ theory of systematic doubt centered on his belief that individuals cannot trust their perceptions of the external world because sensory stimuli do not necessarily reflect true depictions of the world. Throughout his life, Descartes assumed information being received through his senses to be accurate representations of the external world until he realized that the senses as a source for information can occasionally mislead both himself and all other people. With this knowledge in mind, Descartes knew that an absolute confidence in sensory perception could deceive individuals about the external world and lead to a challenging of beliefs. As an example of this, Descartes considered that, as he wrote this meditation on systematic doubt,
The next very important step for Descartes is to establish a criterion of certainty. By examining the truths which he discovered in the course of his second meditation, he decides that all of them have in common the properties of being clear and distinct. Descartes says, “So, I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.” Descartes adds another item to the list of things which he knows clearly and distinctly---ideas.
Hume’s discussion of the “Operations of the Understanding” (Hume 15) ably frames a first comparison with Descartes. Hume divides the objects of human inquiry and reasoning into two categories: relations of ideas and matters of fact. Matters of fact occur in nature and their opposites are conceivable. Relations of ideas are “intuitively or demonstratively certain” (15) and pertain to the disciplines of geometry and algebra. Reason can discover relations of ideas in the realm of thought “without dependence on what is any where existent in the universe” (15) and the opposite of these propositions are inconceivable cont...
Cyberpunks or postmodern science fiction writers create their story into our everyday life and make it more real.
In life it is necessary to have fantasy, because without it, life would be dull and meaningless. Life would be so different without dreams, since they are what motivate humans to keep on moving forward in order to achieve their goals. This is what Jorge Luis Borges is trying to explain to the reader in the book Ficciones which is very confusing, but also very deep in meaning. These stories demonstrate a theme of reality vs. fiction which is fascinating because in many of the readings fantasy is required at some point to accomplish a purpose or goal. Each unique story hides a meaning in the text which is a lesson to be learned. The confusion that is caused is similar to a labyrinth in which the reader gets lost. The message is hidden within the story so; it causes confusion to the reader. Events in the story suggest that the story is fiction, because most of the stories have existent scenery. The timing in some stories is from an event or tragedy that has occurred around that date. The reader realizes later on in the stories that unrealistic events began to occur which are impossible to take place in real life. This is when our minds become entangled with facts from our world and others form the impossible.
"What came to dominate the story and to leave a lasting impression was the view of man as a mystery surrounded by realistic data. A poetic divination or denial of reality. Something that for lack of a better word could be called magical realism." -Uslar Pietri
Her analysis of the metaphysics behind literature derived from Jean Baudrillard who proposed that reality has become an artifice in reality. His precise term for this occurrence is called hyper-reality and consists of society using motifs and signs in order to coincide for what is real, basically, that reality falls far from the understanding of Americans due to the “information-saturated, media-dominated contemporary world”. Gonzalez uses this idea to make the argument that in literature we have lost our grasp with verity and reality; we’ve lost this perception by trying to recreate our pasts and never creating our "now". Moreover, we’re so obsessed with explaining the theories of our ancestors that we’ve created a “perverted” culture of intertextuality. Gonzalez’s most substantial argument stands in that the novel has lost its credibility today because contemporary authors seek to recreate and call the results “postmodernism”, hence, intertextuality. This theme has also been a recurrent one that seems to be the most compelling: people are tired of the same ideas bouncing from one generation to the next, tired of cliché themes, and tired of seeing the same thing in novels. She also portrays technology’s role in this issue with evidence of its threat to the future of the novel; basically, she argues that literature entirely is at risk because all technology does is create an epidemic that destroys present day aesthetic and ideas of the
Writers like Mark Twain wrote about what really mattered to the majority of the population. His stories were not considered fairy tales, but narratives. Realism was an important change in literature, because it allowed the average Joe story to be alright. Instead of paying or reading a story about something you will never have, a person will read about the everyday problems. People saw that humans had more in common than they taught. Mark Twain’s narrative, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn expose the literary movement that is known today as Realism. Mark Twain also criticizes the “ills” of the American society, which he hopes he could be able to correct by raising awareness to the problem.